Max Vs. The Internet

I should preface discussion of my pageflake with a brief nod to my existing RSS feeds and preferred feed reader. I use a Firefox extension called Sage, which while light weight, is incredibly robust. Should I ever hit rock-bottom as an internet addict, I shall be forced to claim that learning to use syndication to get access to fresh content was the initial push down the slippery slope of automated oblivion, and Sage was my enabler. Sage lives in Firefox's sidebar, where it lists all the feeds I've subscribed to. At last count, this was somewhere around 120, which may be too many, but only about a quarter of that number update daily (or more than daily), while a full half seem to update on an approximately weekly basis, and the remaining quarter seem to be broken and need tidying. Those feeds which have updated their content are listed in a bold font after hitting the refresh button. Clicking on a feed loads an abbreviated version of the page without any formating (most often this is raw text, or raw text with the occasional image), while individual items are listed in the same bold-for-unread-plain-text-for-read format in a panel underneath the sidebar's main feed list. It's simple, it's elegant, and for the most part, it's swift.

The one killer feature of sage, the thing I absolutely adore, is its ability to detect feeds. Not every page that supports syndication conveniently provides that ubiquitous feed icon in your browser's address bar. But click Sage's "detect feeds" button, and it will ferret out not only the page's main feed, but also alternates (if you prefer Atom to RSS 2.0, for instance) and secondary feeds, like those for comments. Were I more enthused with the process, I'd describe it as a magical treasure hunt, where every page is a potential mystery waiting to be discovered and collected. But I'm not, so saying that it's convenient and user friendly will have to suffice.

Pageflakes, on the other hand, lives on the web, rather than in my browser. It's one edge over Google's iGoogle start pages (oh yes, I maintain a set of must-read news of the weird feeds on my personal start page) is that it's possible to make a "pagecast" or publish one of your pageflakes for public consumption. A pageflake can hold not only RSS feeds, but also widgets, custom applications, custom searches (akin to Google's news alerts or Lexis-Nexis alerts), or even text boxes (whether it's writing on one's hand, a post-it, or a random .txt file, I think the unfileable note will be with us always).

All of this makes it quite convenient to stay on top of those 30-odd feeds which refresh often enough to reward my compulsive need to check them. My page flake currently holds an assortment of blogs and news feeds from a variety of game related sources. I suppose the best descriptor for most of them is that they would fall under the rubric of "games journalism," but to be honest, that label has gotten so broad as to be problematic. It's not quite clear what games journalism covers, whether it's reviews, honest critics, opinion pieces, news, interviews, or something else. Whatever it is, there's a good deal of it.

Joystiq, Kotaku, MTV Multiplayer, GameSetWatch, Reality Panic, Play This Thing, Sexy Videogameland and the like all seem to fall under the category of games journalism. Fairly light reading, and the bulk of the productive content of the feeds I read seems to come from them. There are, however, purer news sites such as Gamasutra and GamesIndustry.biz. There are sites which skew academic in their subject matter, places like Terra Nova, Gameology, Ludology.org, Confessions of an Aca/Fan, Writer Response Theory, Grand Text Auto, and The Ludologist. There are sites which are related in some ancillary fashion to the study of games and games on the web: We Make Money Not Art often features art games, while danah boyd's Apophenia deals with (and this is a loose interpretation) online communities, something more and more games are coming to identify themselves by. Finally, there are the personal pages of game designers, industry insiders, and gossip mongers like David Jaffe, Game Girl Advance, GameJew, Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars, and so on and so forth. This isn't counting imported social bookmarks or active searches.

There is a bit to trawl through in all of this, and it helps to consider how each category is weighted. The categories are, again: "journalism," news, academic analysis, related fields, and personal pages.

The sites which are lumped into the "journalism" category make up the bulk of the reading available on my page flake. Generally speaking, they are the most accessible material by dint of their editorial slant: where a business news article may just present hard facts, games journalists will offer an interpretation. Often they will pre-digest an academic article, or draw attention to an otherwise overlooked post on a designer's personal blog or a related site. That said, because of the pressure of their medium and the rigors of maintaining a style accessible to a broad audience, they often cannot explore a given subject in thorough detail. Hard news, closely related to "games journalism" deals with the actual facts and figures of the selling games. This isn't to say there is no interplay between the two formats on various sites-- Gamasutra may have a post about the formation or dissolution of a studio right next to an interview, while Kotaku will often include a market analyst's predictions for a game's sales next to a review for one game and the hands-on preview impression of another.

Fringe sources are a little harder to digest, simply because their focus tends to feature games in a cursory, nominal fashion or include games as a single topic among many. Often times, academic or art websites will lose touch with whether or not the play at hand matters in order to discuss the other aspects of a game more congruent with their chosen topic.

The personal blogs of developers or gossip blogs are also incredibly useful. Their insider perspective is often more credible in understanding a popular news item than that of a "journalism" site. The personal angle these sites provide often makes them more compelling to follow, and invests the information they impart with a certain authority. Despite the added benefits of such specialized perspectives, these blogs often lack the scope and objectivity of a "journalism" or business news site.